Create cool, splashy typography using Adobe Photoshop

by Elizabeth Tran

For this month's Designing Women issue, Mirko from the DesignerDaily sent this Photoshop tutorial written by Elizabeth Tran, a bright new designer from China! In this tutorial she shows you how to create cool water typography effect in Photoshop utilizing stock photos, blend modes and filters. She also uses special water splash brushes and smooth gradients to give a splish-splash feel to this unique design typography treatment.

For the stock photos I went in search of water splashes in glasses and water splashes in general, a good source was istock.com for cheap stock photo. Lastly the font was sourced from dafont.comit is called Val: Val Font

Step 1:

First off start a new document 1920×1200 pixels.

Then Fill the background with black using the paint bucket tool (G).

Step 2:

Using the Rectangle Tool (U), on Shape Layer option (this option is the top left-hand icons, the first one is Shape Layer) draw out a rectangle to fill the entire bottom half of the screen. When this layer is created double click it to bring up the Layer Styles, then select Gradient Overlay option and select the handles of the gradient and change to a light grade of navy to a light blue, here I have used #325372 (light navy) – # b9d2e6 (light blue).

Step 3:

Again using the Rectangle Tool (U), on Shape Layer option (this option is the top left-hand icons, the first one is Shape Layer) draw out a rectangle to fill the entire top half of the screen. When this layer is created double click the layer in the layers palette to bring up the Layer Styles, then select Gradient Overlay option and select the handles of the gradient and change to a light blue to an even lighter blue then white, here I have used # c7d8ea (light blue) – # f4fcfe (light blue) – # ffffff (white).

Step 4:

Next using the Text Tool (T), type out a word you want to manipulate, here I am just going to go with ‘water’! I am using the font Val because it resembles a sort of glass tumbler feel and it will also be easy to add the great splashes to.

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